First post 2010
Welcome 2010! It’s 8:30 a.m. and I have descended to my command post for the first news sweep of the day and delivering some words of…ehhh… “wisdom.” Yesterday, I quickly visited the computer store before everything closed down for the 3-day weekend and got myself a strong graphics card (Gigabyte HD 5770) and a Diamond Extreme sound board. I have now what you’d call a “performance box” sitting on the floor next to me — and I’m listening to streaming music in true Dolby stereo surround while enjoying lightning graphics performance in rich true color! Ah, the beauties of technology at truly competitive prices. A (small) dream come true!
I’d hate to start the new year with writing about the cartoon government of Mr. George Papandreou, but, unfortunately, he and his hobbled crowd are a reality we cannot escape from. This reality alone describes in the darkest possible colors the impasse this country is in. In the midst of its worst postwar economic crisis, surrounded by not-to-friendly neighbors, inundated by a 1.5 million foreigners, including hundreds of thousands of Muslim Asians and Africans, Greece is open to unprecedented challenges to its national character, security, and longevity. But the best we can do, unfortunately, is to elect the same discredited scam artists, the very same who drove this country deep into the red, and opened her wide open to many potential threats, to save us.
The whole of the Greek socio-political situation bears a very strong lemming element: Greek voters have been recycling the same tired, unsuccessful, severely limited politicians for decades into “governments.” The counter-argument here of course is that you have to work with what you’ve got. And what we’ve got is second-rate, cheap material posing as a “political class.” The net result is a deadlock in which Greek society deteriorates by the day, losing key elements of stability and cohesion, as it sails rudderless through some of the roughest waters Greece has ever met in her short life as an “independent” country. Leadership is a precious commodity that this country entirely lacks.
But you cannot accomplish much with leadership alone. It is also a question of the proverbial “collective consciousness” delivering the necessary consensus on many basic elements of statehood and political organization. I will never forget, for example, attending town hall meetings in France; although I barely understood what was being debated (my French id rusty, to say the least) I could see grassroots politics taking hold of issues and delivering solutions — the process being often heated, but never rancorous to the point of delivering a riot instead of resolutions as it is the case with most such meetings in this country. I can enumerate many similar examples from other foreign countries I had the opportunity to experience first hand. Looking at how “simple people” organize to face community needs can tell you much about the stability and survivability of political systems.
O, I can go on on this particular subject forever. Our present cartoon government is one of the best (in fact, most frightening) examples of this fatal defect of the Greek political “system,” that is to say the proclivity toward the unplanned, the hurriedly conceived, and total lack of forethought. Right now, for example, we are faced with yet another tax “reform” — one of the dozens in recent years — and the basics of the “plan” would put veteran horror movie script writers to shame. I have ceased being amazed at the bottomless stupidity and recklessness of Greek “lawmakers” a long time ago, but the current unfolding debacle leaves past experiences in the dust.
Back to more pleasant things. Today, I plan to take my new Olympus E-620 out for a photo shoot with its 70-300 mm super telephoto lens attached. I have read brilliant things about this lens which, reportedly, delivers an amazing range of shots out of a truly portable package that does not cost an arm and a leg. One of the things that you learn fast, once you get involved in photography past the Sunday run phase, is that a good lens is expensive to the point of being out of range for most “consumer” photographers. Here and there though there are cost-effective, high quality examples and this Olympus Zuiko lens is one of the best of them.
Off to get ready, then.